ASHFIELD — Town officials have learned that a $47,198 payment to Solect Energy for solar installation work was never received by the company and was instead paid to scammers.
Officials had been in legitimate discussions with Solect Energy before scammers inserted themselves into the email chain, using a nearly identical domain for their email. According to an announcement about the scam that is posted on the town website, the legitimate emails for Solect Energy use the domain solect.com, while the scammers used solects.com. The town was able to confirm that the original invoice sent in the email chain was genuine, however, the follow-up emails in the chain were not.
“The big thing here is that the email from the fraudster, it was mid-email chain,” Town Administrator Paul McLatchy III said during Wednesday’s Selectboard meeting to discuss next steps. “We had already been maintaining legitimate correspondence with this company, and then, mid-stream, this person inserted themselves in using an identical signature, [a] nearly identical domain name, so it didn’t raise any questions.”
This $47,198 payment was believed to have been sent to the Hopkinton-based energy company in June, after the Selectboard signed a letter of intent in March 2025 and received an $870,000 grant for the solar project in November of that same year. The grant pays for 90% of the installation costs for a ground-mounted array at the Wastewater Treatment Plant and a roof-mounted array at the Highway Garage.
However, Solect Energy contacted the town last week to say that it had never received the payment for installing solar panels on the roof of the Highway Garage.
“We’re very early on in the discovery phase of what appears to be fraud committed against the town,” Selectboard Chair Todd Olanyk said. “It appears that someone fraudulently intercepted a payment that we made to our solar partner, Solect, and scammed us out of that money. … It’d be most prudent for the board to look at this as money lost.”
Olanyk said that luckily, the town has been engaging in “a very sound financial fashion,” and that Ashfield can absorb this loss. He noted, however, that it was “just unfortunate that it happened.”
“There’s a special place in hell for these people,” he added.
Ashfield Police Chief Beth Bezio said her department has opened an investigation and she has contacted the FBI, which has offered resources to the town. The federal agency requested more information from Ashfield, so it can move forward with next steps.
After some discussion with the FBI, Bezio said the transaction cannot be stopped because it happened too long ago.
“I don’t want to guarantee that they will have resources that will be helpful for us, but I want to see what the FBI can offer,” Bezio said. “We were compromised, [or] someone was compromised, and it’s really not a fault of a person.”
Energy Committee member Mary Quigley said the fraudulent bill from the scammers came just two hours after the legitimate invoice from Solect Energy was sent, with the town confirming that the scammers requested the money be sent through an ACH transaction rather than a check. An ACH transaction is the electronic transfer of money through a network called Automated Clearing House.
Town Treasurer Julie Wonkka said very few transactions are carried out through an ACH, however, the Selectboard noted it is a normal way for some invoices to be paid, so it didn’t raise any alarms at the time.
This fraud was quick moving, as the scammers set up a domain and a bank account, received the money, emptied the bank account and then shut down the account, with Wonkka adding that TruNorth Bank said the whole process happened within a span of about two weeks.
McLatchy said he didn’t want to make any promises, but after preliminary discussions with town counsel, Ashfield has opened up an insurance claim and this loss could be covered as it may fall in the realm of cybercrime.
Selectboard Vice Chair Steven Gougeon said that if nothing else, this is a good wake-up call for municipal employees in Ashfield and for the surrounding communities. Member Tom Carter echoed Gougeon’s point, and said it wouldn’t prove fruitful to point the finger and blame one particular person for engaging with the scammer.
“It’s a ‘where do we go from here,'” Carter said, “and it’s a really good opportunity to make everyone aware.”
The town has said it is committed to “full transparency” and will provide updates to residents as the fraud investigation continues.
